Past Lives Wanted
by Mischa1
Summary: Recently on a stakeout you didn't have the heart for, he turned to you and asked if you dreamed in colour.


Past Lives Wanted  
by Mischa  
mischablue@iprimus.com.au  
  
Category: VA  
Keywords: Scully/Doggett UST, ref to past Mulder/Scully DAL  
Spoilers: TINH. Brief spoilers for The Gift, Kitsunegari,  
Pilot, FTF, abduction arc, Memento Mori, Roadrunners,  
Tithonus... oh, heck, just general knowledge for all eight  
seasons up to the beginning of DeadAlive.  
Timeline: Three month DeadAlive interval  
Summary: Recently on a stakeout you didn't have the heart  
for, he turned to you and asked if you dreamed in colour.  
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine. Chris Carter's. No  
infringement intended.  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Remembrance is something that comes naturally to you now,  
even though three months remain submerged in light and pain.  
Memory is something you need, something you crave, and in  
slumber history plays out in triple time. It hovers against  
the darkness, a painful reality too clear to ever be the  
truth you seek.  
  
In what feels like a past life, memory was a good thing,  
treated with fondness. Now it is simply a record of time  
passing, but it is time you need, because you have already  
lost three months of your life, three years of a child, and  
you cannot afford to lose any more. Time is different now,  
shared with a different man, pursuing a different angle of  
the quest. Once, long ago, the truth was about finding  
answers for the past. Now, it is about preventing dangers of  
the future.  
  
Recently on a stakeout you didn't have the heart for, he  
turned to you and asked if you dreamed in colour. An idle  
question that you felt had no purpose; John Doggett was not  
a man of idle questions. Thinking of in now, in the  
insightful clarity of a freed subconscious, you realise what  
he was driving for...  
  
/...splash of red blood painted across sky of tense failings  
cerulean blue poured down a man's throat harsh white light  
first nine minutes blur of spotted black and hum and sharp  
silver stings.../  
  
You dream in colour.  
  
/...whistle of metal through the air murky green swimming  
past frozen eyeballs blur of grey bending over to stare into  
white emptiness of tumor enclosed in skull.../  
  
You dream in colour and live until the darkness kills you.  
The screams are weak. The screams can never fully force  
their way out of your throat.  
  
Doggett knows. You do not know how he knows, but you  
suspect, and you have never wanted to reach across the  
boundaries enough to ask. He carries the understanding  
weight of technicolour dreams and greyscale pain under his  
gaze.  
  
You have held your suspicions ever since a psychic looked  
him in the eye and confronted him with a truth he had never  
confessed to you, ever since you caught him once silently  
grieving over what you perceived to be a success. His job  
only ever required him to find Mulder. There was no quota  
availed to him on the measure of life involved.  
  
He knows, and you feel his understanding each time you fall  
into step with him. You are learning to walk in his pace  
just as he is learning to walk in yours, and with each step  
taken you both learn a little more, more pieces of  
yourselves are revealed. He is a man of bravery, of honesty,  
of integrity, and you hold each of those characteristics  
close.  
  
In what feels like an eternity ago you would have wanted a  
man like this in your house, in your bed, in your body. Now  
it is simply enough to have him in your life. He caught you  
when you fell, carried you through the night, held you with  
his presence when the pain of grief became too much to bear.  
He kept you honest, kept you grounded. He watched you when  
you didn't care to watch yourself. He ripped someone's god  
out of your spine seconds before it consumed you alive.  
  
Each action between you, each gentle swaying of dynamic,  
speaks of a concern and respect you had forgotten in the  
fires of trial, in the madness of human monsters forever  
rising. He would always protect you -- his actions alone  
speak for that -- and you are slowly coming to the  
realisation that you would fight to do the same for him.  
  
/...all is red of passion of heat of blood of death of the  
colour of Emily's hair of Melissa's of silent stoplight  
swooping out of the darkness that came when death was  
forsaken in the field on the floor in a hospital room at the  
barrel of a cold metal gun.../  
  
Awaken with a start, tremble in the blackness. Somewhere in  
the back of your mind the wild echo of your cries resonate.  
  
Doggett is not a phoenix; he can survive and endure just as  
you and Mulder have, but he can never rise from the dead.  
Yet he rises out of the darkness that surrounds you, arms  
held towards you like angels' broken wings, and you wonder  
if this is still a dream. Yes, it would have to be a dream,  
only played out in sketched wax figures formed within an  
isolate pool of Indian ink.  
  
He leans close and speaks to you with an understanding that  
you cannot comprehend. Words that you could never understand  
in the clarity of day, because in reality you are both  
solid, both real, both practical. Not figments of soul  
meeting briefly in the darkness. Not whatever it is you are  
when this man touches you on the shoulder and you are  
strangely soothed.  
  
You would never want to forget this, but you will. His  
gentle hands coax you back into sleep, a sleep where there  
are no dreams. If rationality was not so blurred for you,  
maybe you would stop to recognise that this man has come  
into your life, this man protects you, this man can hold the  
darkness at bay just as you have, just as others have.  
  
In what feels like a lost collection of youthful memory you  
would have held onto this man and never let him go. Now you  
understand all too well that life is fleeting and years of  
seeming immortality will always end buried under earth. Now  
there is the responsibility of grief, a man in your heart  
who now only exists in memory and crumbling soil.  
  
And so you awaken without Doggett's arms around you, not what   
you once may have hoped. As you lift your head to meet his  
gaze, watching you from the corner, the feeling is enough  
for you to call alone. In the darkness wisps of memory dance  
away from you, away into the night, calling dreams of past  
lives wanted away from your mind.  
  
~ END ~ 


End file.
